The first quarter of the year has been a busy one for the DSouza household. Mia turned 5! We thank God for her. Eddie’s family came over to celebrate Mia’s birthday. Mia had multiple celebrations with various groups of friends. She made up for not having an event last year.
School life
School life has been exciting for the kids and the parents. This year a few more activities got added into learning.
The kids reared a few caterpillars, some of which turned into butterflies. They got to watch the whole process of the butterfly come out of its chrysalis and gain strength in its wings before it flew away.
The girls have also been creating beautiful drawings, needlework, quilling art and greeting cards for the ones they love. They are being trained to make personalized handmade gifts and they love the idea.
Lauren also has included local festival studies into their learning. The learning is pretty immersive. Not only do they read, draw, color and hear about the festivals – but at times they also get to taste festive foods. Its a win-win.
Leisure
We began to take long walks on Saturday mornings since January. It has been fun to walk around the neighborhood, to walk around lakes, watch birds and have a great time in general. Mia loves the walk time – as soon as we begin – she is just hungry – she requests that we take her to eat at some of her favorite breakfast spots – as soon as she is done eating she is too tired to walk and wants to return home. We have to be creative to keep her moving. One morning she found a wonderful bench for walkers and loved the idea that people made benches for ‘walkers’. What she had discovered was a bus stop!
Church
Cross Cultured Church moved to a larger space after about 7+ years in the previous place. Eddie got the opportunity to work on the A/V cabling and installation. He loved the job and did his best to ensure that it was a job well done. He feels he will be part of every song, every prayer and every sermon that will travel through those cables.
Seminary
The whole of this quarter can be described as learning Greek. Eddie is three chapters away from completing his course. By the end of April, the course will be done and graded. We are grateful to God that he gave Eddie the grace to understand the concepts of Greek grammar.
Many of you have been asking us for updates on the Seminary admission front. At the moment we are still waiting to receive documents to apply for student and dependent visas. The process for acquiring those documents have begun! That is good news. We expect to receive those documents by the end of April and begin the visa process. But we have no idea what will happen by that time with respect to the pandemic situation. Further, the earliest visa appointment at the time of posting this newsletter is mid-June. We have no idea if we will be able to acquire an appointment in time to travel on July 21 – which is our planned travel date. Like always – God willing! This entire path has been a challenge-breakthrough A-B-A-B pattern. God has been keeping us on our knees each step of the way.
We did receive the formal scholarship grant letter from the seminary. Praise God! We got awarded the whole estimated amount. It will cover most expenses that will make life livable. Eddie will still have to earn and/or raise additional funds for other expenses. We trust that God will provide for those expenses in his own ways.
Currently we are trying to learn how much money we need to raise for the logistics of setting up the house once we arrive in Minneapolis. Friends in the US or American friends, if you have any advise for us, please do write to us. We do not know what to expect nor know how to go about the process. For now, we trust that God will lead us with the wisdom and resources for setting up once we get there. When we began the process two years ago, we budgeted the amount we need for the logistics of moving out of Mysore. We have received 85% of that budget. And we are very grateful to God for all the providence.
We will send in a quick update on visa front – if and when anything happens.
The countdown is at 110 days to leave from Mysore.
